The campaign he calls Make Ellen Laugh kicked off Thursday morning and set Twitter humming with dozens of tweets a minute using the hashtag.

The Bethlehem man who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, type 2, one of the 43 neuromuscular
diseases beneath the muscular dystrophy umbrella, made a video called "Dear Ellen" in which he explains he always faces his difficulties with a sense of humor and says "life is just too amazing to waste time being unhappy."